U.S. Bank this month closed on several tax-credit financing packages worth more than $77 million with Dominium, an apartment-development and -management company. Dominium will use the dollars to develop the century-old Arcade Building in St. Louis into a mixed-use space for university classes and 282 market-rate and affordable-housing apartments.
The renovation of the 18-floor 500,000-square-foot building at 800 Olive St. includes 202 affordable and 80 market-rate apartments ranging in size from one to three bedrooms. The affordable units are specifically designed to meet the needs of artists, offering one- to three-bedroom apartments and more than 13,000 square feet of artist studio space.
Dominium plans to market the affordable-housing units to artists. Dominium has already had success leasing oft space in the Leather Trades and Metropolitan Artist Lofts buildings in St. Louis and Schmidt Artist Lofts in the Twin Cities area.
The Arcade’s first two floors and mezzanine of 55,000 square feet will be leased to Webster University for classes, a 170-seat auditorium, community kitchen and art gallery. This epands the Webster University comapus downtown to 85,000 square feet from 33,000 square feet.
U.S. Bank invested $77 million raised through its investments in federal New Markets Tax Credits, federal and state historic tax credits and a separate investment arranged from federal low-income housing tax credits.